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Each year more than 500 New Zealanders take their own lives. Each year more than 2500 others attempt to take their own lives and fail.

But is it really us as a nation who have failed?

While Australia, Canada, the US and the UK have instilled guidelines rather than criminal laws, New Zealand has strict rules and restrictions on the reporting of suicide.

Even bereaved families could face prosecution for speaking publicly about a family member's suicide.

There's real concern if the media reports on such events, it could encourage copy-cat suicides or contagion and cluster suicides.

While I'm sure that there are Harvard-worthy graphs and charts substantiating those claims, I can't help but think there's something big, really big we're missing here.

Our rates aren't dropping.

In fact, little old New Zealand has shamefully made the top 50 of the World Health Organisation's list of global suicide rates. It's a list you don't want to star on.

So how can say with any authority that our way is working?

It seems we're perhaps more focused on throwing a protective veil over the whole tragic act of suicide while holding our fingers to our lips with a "Shhhhh."

Should we not encourage the airwaves to be opened, commence the dialogue and be ready to hear from those who think life's a shit sandwich and it's always lunchtime.

I have had colleagues and friends share with me the reality of the dark abyss they, often unknowingly, spiralled into. Death most certainly an option and for two of them, failed attempts at ending the misery.

But that information was forthcoming only once they'd emerged from the haze, back from the brink and normal transmission, for the most part, resumed.